From Wordsworth to Wainwright, the beauty of the Lake District has long captured the imagination of writers.

James Rebanks set out to tell a different story.

To him, the fells are not a holiday destination but the site of his hardest work, the place where he herds 600 Herdwick and Swaledale sheep.

This is tough terrain that has been farmed in much the same way over hundreds of years.

The Shepherd’s Life is a fascinating insight into this world, which will be completely unknown to most of us. You will look at the countryside differently after reading it.

“I do quite like to be a bridge so that people can pass over to my side,” says Rebanks.

“I think it’s really unhealthy for a society to be so disconnected from where their food comes from. Farmers have been hopeless at explaining what they do for so long, but if I want to survive I need to convince people that what I do matters.’’

It is a traditional world with an ancient order. Shepherding is back-breaking, endless work, poorly paid and barely recognised by the rest of us.

Reputations are hard won and poor decisions are remembered for decades. Incomers are regarded with suspicion.

“Some people’s lives are entirely their own creation. Mine isn’t,” he writes. Yet his book is born of the modern age. Having set up a Twitter account in 2012, @herdyshepherd1, to share brief insights into his world and snapshots of sheep, James’s following grew rapidly (he now has almost 83,000 followers).

Author James Rebanks

In 2013 the US magazine Atlantic Monthly commissioned an article called Why This Shepherd Loves Twitter.

That article “went viral”, says James, and immediately offers came in from literary agents in New York and London. This was followed by a bidding war for the book, which at that stage was just a few chapters long.

The Shepherd’s Life has been a bestseller in the UK, the United States and Canada, and is being translated into 20 languages.

Modestly, James puts its success down to the dearth of other books about rural lives. “If the media or the world of books is dominated by more urban writers or white middle-class writers, then lots of stories don’t get told,” he says.

Tempting as it is to read James’s story as one of overnight success, The Shepherd’s Life is a version of the book he started writing when he was 20.

In the years in between he continued to write poetry, much of which has been “turned into prose” for the book.

“I think I secretly want to be a poet,” says James. Little surprise, then, that he loves Twitter and its 140 characters. “I love the format,” he says. “As a writer, I love the discipline of it.”

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Although parts of the book James began writing 20 years ago remain, its emphasis changed.

The original, unfinished book was to focus on James’s relationship with his grandfather, whom he idolised. It was going to be a ‘manly’ book, with tough prose inspired by the likes of Hemingway and Bukowski.

Instead, it turned out to be “a book about my dad and how I learned to love him and respect him,” says James. “Another part of growing up is seeing that you don’t need to be tough.”

James’s dad died a month before the book came out but he read a manuscript and was delighted to find that he came out of it looking “like a legend”. James says: “The best thing about writing the book was that I got to tell my dad everything I felt before he died.

He adds: “Everyone thinks my life has changed but it hasn’t changed at all. Nobody in the valley treats me any differently.”

James Rebanks will be at Durham Book Festival on October 9 - for more details visit www.durhambookfestival.com - and also at the Forum Cinema, Hexham, on October 14 in an event organised by Cogito Books.

The Forum will also have a screening of the documentary Addicted To Sheep on the same day at 5pm. Tickets for both the James Rebanks event and the screening can be bought from Cogito Books, Hexham - www.cogitobooks.com - or the Forum Cinema at www.hexhamforum.com or tel. 01434 601144.